Utah lawmakers voted to abide by a state law requiring students to use the restroom corresponding to their biological sex, ignoring President Joe Biden’s new Title IX rule that allows transgender students to use the restroom of their choice. 

Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT) called the legislature into a special session on Wednesday to determine if the state would use the Utah Constitutional Sovereignty Act to assert state law over federal law. The legislature passed two resolutions affirming the state’s right to bypass the Title IX regulations.

During a Business and Labor Interim Committee hearing ahead of the vote, Republican state Rep. Kera Birkeland said, “If I’m being completely candid here, we don’t want people using [Title IX] as an excuse to ignore the state laws because they don’t like our state law. We want to make it clear that we have a state law that will be enforced in our schools.”

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Utah House Democrats slammed the decision. “The notion that Title IX forces schools to allow males to compete against females or access women’s private spaces denies the identities of transgender youth and is overly simplistic,” they said in a statement. “Transgender youth do not pose a threat to women or girls. They are merely navigating life like all other kids.”

The Biden administration’s new Title IX regulations, released in April, changed the definition of sex to include gender identity and sexual orientation. The administration’s updated rules come into conflict with the restroom law Utah passed in January, as well as a Utah law that restricts biological men from competing in women’s sports. The transgender sports law is on hold as a lawsuit against it makes its way through the courts.